Beni was dancing about, calling out, “Hey, Rick! Looks to me like we got all the camels and horses!”
This was followed by a peal of obnoxious laughter, as high-pitched as it was unpleasant.
“Maybe so, Beni!” O’Connell called back. “But looks to me like you are on the wrong side of the river!”
The skinny man in the fez stopped dancing in midstep. He looked up at the stars and shook his head, and his fists, then started angrily kicking the sand, cursing in several languages, a display both impressive and ridiculous.
“What now?” Evelyn asked O’Connell.
“We try to keep warm till morning. You do know how to cuddle, don’t you?”
She smirked at him, arms folded over her breasts. “When the occasion calls for it.”
8
Camel Jockeys
The endless, sunbaked Sahara stretched out before them, a frying pan for the little camel caravan to sizzle in. O’Connell led the way, with Evelyn just behind him, keeping up nicely, trailed by her brother and the Cairo prison’s absentee warden, Gad Hassan.
O’Connell found the great desert, with its sweeping vistas shimmering in the sunlight, an awe-inspiring, intimidating landscape, not be taken lightly. Right now they were moving over hard, sandy terrain littered with stones—plains not unlike the American Southwest, dotted with the Egyptian version of sagebrush, vissigia. But a day ahead awaited seas of fine, shifting sands, with the peaks and valleys of dunes, where at any moment the scorching winds called “siroccos” could sweep in, suffocating man and beast.
They had purchased these four, flea-bitten camels at the trading post of an oasis several miles inland, after their rescue by Bedouins who had seen the fire against the sky. Its date palms thriving along a shallow stream, the oasis was a site of bustling Bedouin commerce, and O’Connell had spent much of the night dickering over the price of the camels, some rudimentary camp equipment, and food supplies (dates, cakes and mint tea).
Jonathan, whose cash supply had survived the swim, complained about the price of the four “mangy beasts,” until O’Connell pointed out that the alternative was to give the Bedouin trader Jonathan’s sister.
“Tempting proposition, what?” Jonathan had said.
And O’Connell had said, “Tempting indeed,” but in reference to the sight of Evelyn Carnahan emerging from a tent wearing her new dress: a beautifully sewn blue Bedouin gown that both flowed over, and clung to, her womanly curves.
At first they had trekked through the green valley of the Nile, breathing in the sweet perfume of grass and clover wafted to them by a bracing desert wind. But only a few hours later, their camels were shuffling over the flat, stone-littered desert floor, ground dry with a centuries-old thirst unquenched by rain.
Jonathan rode well enough; though a trained equestrian, he obviously resented the ungainly gait of the camels.
“Filthy buggers,” he said to O’Connell. “They smell, they bite, they spit. Never seen the like.”
Apparently Jonathan hadn’t noticed the warden, just behind him, gobbling up dates, spitting out their seeds, unheedful of the flies buzzing about his head.
“Well,” Evelyn said, “I think they’re adorable.”
O’Connell figured she was referring to the camels, not the warden and his flies.
Evelyn seemed to be enjoying herself, her skills as a horsewoman serving her well. She jogged up on her beast, bobbing along next to O’Connell, and said, “Don’t mind Jonathan. He’s just a trifle peevish. You see, his bourbon supply is at the bottom of the Nile somewhere.”
O’Connell squinted at the blinding bright sun. “We’re all likely to get ‘peevish,’ before this journey’s over.”
“Well, personally I think this is lovely countryside,” she said, chipper. “Doesn’t it just make you wonder what all the fuss is about our so-called civilization? I mean, here we are in the midst of this barren immensity. Doesn’t it just put humility into your soul, and purge the vanity from your heart? Doesn’t it make you ponder that the great vastness of the desert is like the universe, and we are but tiny grains of sand?”
“I was just going to say that.”
She smiled, her chin crinkling cutely. “You’re making fun of me, Mr. O’Connell.”
“Why don’t you call me ‘Rick’?”
“Why should I?”
“It’s my name.”
She looked down her nose at him, reining back on her camel, to fall back in place behind O’Connell. “But then Mr. O’Connell, I should have to allow you to call me Evelyn.”
He grinned back at her. “Or worse yet—Evy.”
And she had granted him a tiny smile.
Perhaps an hour later, however, she and her camel sidled up alongside O’Connell again, and now her cheery attitude had darkened, her brow tightly troubled.
“I’ve been reflecting on last night’s unfortunate incident,” she said. “Those terrible men on the boat . . .”
“The ones with tattoos, you mean?”
“It’s nothing to make light of. I believe they may have been attempting to halt us in our . . . quest.”
“How so?”
“Their tattoos were ancient markings indicating they belonged to a sect known as the Med-jai, a cult thought lost in antiquity.”
“What sort of cult?”
“Well, that’s why I suspect they had hoped to prevent us from reaching Hamanaptra. The Med-jai were said to be the guardians of the City of Dead. Little more is known of them.”
“So you think we might run into some more of these jokers?”
“That’s difficult to predict, Mr. O’Connell—after all, the ones we saw last night were the first, to my knowledge, ever seen in the twentieth century . . . or the nineteenth, for that matter, or the eighteenth, or—”
“I get your point.”
As the afternoon wore on, he detected her spirits waning further; but then so were his. It was tough going, and the endless ride on the bumpy road that was the back of every camel drained the riders’ energy, and the caravan talked little amongst themselves.
O’Connell knew his tiny brood was fading. Late in the afternoon, he spotted a cluster of palms up ahead and—as soon as he’d convinced himself it wasn’t a mirage—directed them to set up camp there for the night.
The flaming crimson ball that was the setting sun threw streaks of red and purple across the landscape, until the eerie haze of dusk banished them from view. The furnace of the day shut off, suddenly, and coolness descended as they made camp, at first crisp, then downright cold. An old well provided fresh water, drawn in a goat’s skin at the end of a rope draped over a worn beam, which they hitched to O’Connell’s camel, pulling the water pouch up by driving the camel away from the well.
“I want you all to get some sleep, now,” O’Connell told them, as they gathered about the small fire he’d made of palm tree twigs and branches, eating dates and cakes and sipping the syrup-sweet minty tea. “We’re going to rise again around one a.m., so we can travel without that sun beating down on us.”
This meant only a few hours of sleep, but there was no argument: The idea of traveling under the stars and moon sounded inviting after so much time under the blazing sun.
The supplies purchased from the Bedouins included four little tents with four camel’s hair pallets and camel’s hair blankets that made for fairly comfortable sleeping conditions, though—even with the fire, which O’Connell kept going—the desert cold was brutal. O’Connell had wrangled four burnooses from the Bedouins, and the hooded robes made excellent sleeping wear in the chill climate.
Amused as he’d been by Evelyn’s grandiose ramblings about the desert and the universe, O’Connell knew she was on to something. That was the lure of the desert: a sense that in the vastness of eternity, your life was meaningless, which offered a kind of freedom, a release from the need to pursue gain and glory. Under the star-studded purple of the desert sky, a man could reflect on such things.
At least he
could have, if not for the thunderlike snoring of the warden. Tossing and turning, Jonathan grumbled about it, then began to snore, himself. O’Connell, amused as he lay in his tent, was almost asleep when Evelyn crawled in with him.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “But it’s so bitterly cold. Would you mind, terribly?”
“Mind?”
“Cuddling. Conditions do call for it, once again.”
And he held her in his arms, and spent at least an hour thinking about kissing her, lost in the sweet softness of holding her close, before he finally drifted off to sleep, not knowing Evelyn had been entertaining similar desires.
He woke just before one, roused Evelyn, bidding her return to her tent before the others awoke, and misunderstood; and she nodded, saying she quite agreed. Soon he had roused them all, advised them to leave their burnooses on for the night travel, and they pulled up stakes and mounted their camels for a ride over sands turned ivory by moonlight.
The hot tan world of the Sahara had turned cool and blue under the stars. O’Connell, as always, led the way, with Evelyn beside him, their camels loping along; behind them, side by side, were Jonathan and Warden Hassan, both sound asleep, bobbing like the heads-on-springs of carnival toys, their snoring echoing across the sands, their camels following the lead of O’Connell’s and Evelyn’s.
O’Connell kept an eye on the young woman, still drowsy from so short a rest, and when she slowly began to slide off her saddle, he reached over, caught her, gently pushing her back up onto her mount, without even waking her. He took advantage of her slumber to study her, to bask in the beauty of her heart-shaped face, with its delicately carved features, the fullness of her lips . . .
Beni had been right: Women were his weakness. But this was different, somehow; he was not viewing Evelyn with an adventurer’s eye, seeking conquest. He was facing the worst danger that could befall a soldier of fortune: a woman he could love.
Then his eyes rose to a distant ridge where he detected another danger: a group of riders on horseback, dark-garbed Arabs, who seemed to be following along with them, keeping pace. They were too far away for him to be sure, and with the moonlight painting the desert ivory and blue, it was hard to be sure . . .
. . . but he could swear the riders’ hands, their faces, were the tattooed flesh of the warriors who’d attacked on the Ibis last night. Could these desert shadows be Evelyn’s fabled Med-jai?
Of course, they could be desert nomads of any number of tribes, none of which were a threat to the little caravan. As if bearing this theory out, the riders disappeared from the ridge and, as the early morning hours edged their way toward daylight, O’Connell saw nothing of them again.
The coolness of night began to disappear before the sun had shown its face, and as the heat of the coming day began to assert itself, the four lone camel riders stopped to stow away their burnooses and sip some water. Jonathan and Hassan took this opportunity to bicker, accusing each other of snoring, each denying his own guilt.
Soon the caravan was under way again, the dawning sun hiding behind an immense sand dune, alongside which their camels loped.
Eveyln fell in beside him. “What are you thinking?” she asked him.
“I’m thinking we’re almost there.”
“How can you be sure? One stretch of desert looks much like any other stretch of desert.”
“Not if you pay attention to the road signs.” And he nodded off to his left, and her eyes followed his lead to what at first glance appeared to be some sort of rock formation; then she realized what she was looking at: bleached bones. Human bones, skeletons sticking out of the sand, haphazardly, looking as if they were trying to crawl up out of desert graves.
“Oh my dear,” she said.
“Bloody hell!” Jonathan said. “Who do you suppose those poor blighters were?”
“Other seekers of the City of Dead,” Warden Hassan said; he was shivering, though the chill of the night had long since gone.
A wooden sign on a post had been stuck in the sand, in the midst of the boneyard, bearing Arabic script.
“What does that say?” Jonathan asked his sister. “ ‘Keep off the grass’?”
Evelyn flashed her brother a withering look. “It says, ‘Go back—stay away.’ ”
Jonathan shrugged. “I was fairly close, at that.”
“That was recently placed,” O’Connell said of the sign. Had it not been, the shifting sands might well have covered the freshly painted warning. “Advice from your Med-jai friends, perhaps?”
Evelyn said nothing, but her expression was grave. Then she turned toward a rumbling sound just behind them.
The rumbling quickly grew to a thunderous pounding of hooves as, around the far end of that looming sand dune which still blotted out the sun, came three dozen riders, kicking up their own sandstorm.
Evelyn, next to O’Connell, reached for his sleeve. “The Med-jai!” she cried.
“No,” O’Connell said. “Those are native diggers—that’s my pal Beni, in the lead.”
“With those blasted Americans,” Jonathan added.
And indeed it was: the three American roughnecks on horseback, their mousy professor of Egyptology on a mule, and Beni—leading the expedition, the man who, after all, knew the way to Hamanaptra—was astride a camel, a considerably better groomed one than those of O’Connell’s group.
Beni reined his camel to a stop and the expedition drew up behind him, like cavalry waiting to attack. Perhaps a hundred feet separated the larger American party from the little caravan.
“Good morning, Rick!” Beni called. “What a small desert this must be, for friends to run into each other like this!”
O’Connell just nodded. He kicked his camel, gently, and his group began to edge along the mountainous dune, toward the rising sun which had not quite shown itself.
Beni nodded at the Americans, and they—and the native diggers behind them—followed along with O’Connell’s group at this leisurely pace.
That arrogant bastard, Henderson, called out, “Hey, O’Connell? We still got a bet, right? First one to the city wins five c’s?”
O’Connell again nodded, but his attention was fixed upon the endless horizon ahead, where the sky over the sandy ridge was lightening.
“What the hell are we doin’?” the stoic Daniels demanded of Beni.
This was a conversation O’Connell and his group could not hear.
“Patience, my good barat’m,” Beni said, “patience.”
Burns, squinting behind his wirerim glasses, asked Beni, “On this terrain, which mount is faster? Camels or horses?”
“Camels.”
Daniels leaned in. “Wanna make a hundred clams, Beni boy?”
“Clams?”
“Smackeroos. Bucks. Simoleons. Dollars.”
“Ah yes—a rose by any other name.”
“Well, help us win that bet, and you can have your hundred roses. You be our jockey in this little camel race.”
During this consultation between Beni and his employers, O’Connell was having his own tête-à-tête with Evelyn.
“You’re a fine rider,” he told her.
“Why thank you,” she said, surprised.
“Obviously you’re a skilled horsewoman, or you wouldn’t sit a camel so well.”
“Thank you, Mr. O’Connell. Why do you . . . ?”
“Get ready.”
“For what?”
His eyes tightened and he almost smiled at her. “We’re about to be shown the way.”
The crimson sun was finally revealing itself, rising to flood the sands with its rays, yet a dark shape was rising too, revealed by the sun, the silhouette of a mountain, its peak lopped off . . . no—a volcano, older than antiquity, dead as the desert sands, but as unmistakable, and as majestic a landmarker as the gods . . . or God . . . had ever provided.
O’Connell glanced over at Beni; and Beni glanced over at him. As the sole survivors of the legionnaire expedition that had followed their col
onel’s map to this volcanic guide-post, they shared a moment, exchanged grins . . .
. . . and then simultaneously swatted their respective camels, shouting, “Tuk-tuk-tuk!”
As O’Connell and Beni raced toward the looming landmark, the other riders blinked a few times, gathered their wits, and took off after them. The horses were magnificent Arabian steeds, but on these sands were no match for the mangy graceless camels.
One of the camel riders, Jonathan Carnahan, amazed and delighted by this turn of events, jeered back at the Americans and damn near fell off his perch; but O’Connell and Beni were still way out ahead, neck and neck, though Evelyn was coming up fast, hair streaming in the wind.
Beni, his face clenched in a terrible smile, whipped his camel, then suddenly, viciously, used that whip on O’Connell! The air cracked twice as the whip lashed out for O’Connell in Beni’s attempt to knock him from his camel. But on Beni’s third try, O’Connell reached out, grasped the whip and jerked it, yanking a screaming Beni right off his saddle, slamming him to the sand in a tumbling pile, in the direct path of the oncoming camels and horses.
Stumbling awkwardly at first, then dancing nimbly, Beni got out of the way as Jonathan and all the others stampeded past him in a cloud of dust and sand, leaving him weaving, wheeling, wheezing, coughing, cursing.
O’Connell glanced beside him and saw that Evelyn was right alongside, keeping a hard, steady pace, her eyes glittering, her smile endless, her joy palpable. The volcano loomed next to them, guiding them into the valley where, up ahead, the fabled ruins of Hamanaptra beckoned.
Her laughter, her look of triumph, made him smile, and he told himself he liked this girl, when of course he already loved her. Then she bolted out ahead of him, charging toward the stone ramp up to the pylons of the temple.
And that’s when he remembered the sand dune just beyond the gates of the temple, and shouted, “Evelyn! Slow down! There’s a really big—”
But that was all he got out before she flew between those pylons and her camel threw on its brakes and she went flying, ass-over-teakettle, landing in an unceremonious heap in the sand dune.
The Mummy Page 9
